Turns out we're going to war with Russia next year and nobody told me. I expected this to read like a documentary, given the author's background, so was very surprised to find it was written like a thriller. Not sure about the style but the content is definitely worth reading!

Skip the TV series and read this. Incredible book. Must have annoyed him somewhat that he spent his whole life writing science fiction about space ships and aliens, then this is the book that gets all the critical acclaim.

Great book about the changes in Angola upon independence, told from the point of view of someone locked in their apartment. English translation is pretty good.

Some pretty old school opinions about "the natives" but an interesting read on Portugal's messy insurgencies in Africa. He got great access.

I hated his flowery writing style at first, but kind of like it now. An incredible piece of investigative journalism.

omigosh-man in the high castle, superintelligence, zero--yes! all being read over the past 6 mos. by people here.curious to check out the other titles posted.its a small world after all. and im so relieved.

Bandit Roads is probably a more poetical title. lolIve only been to mexico twice....but the remote mexico this man describes is even more annoying to me than most of the hinterlands of alaska, socially speaking.but thats just my opinion. :))

Loved Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians", this is (from Amazon); A specialist in psychological warfare is driven to breakdown and madness by the stresses of a project of macabre ingenuity to win the war in Vietnam....And a megalomaniac Boer frontiersman wreaks hideous vengeance on a Hottentot tribe for undermining the 'natural' order of his universe with their anarchic rival order, mocking him and subjecting him to the humiliations of his own all too palpable flesh.

2 years ago I woke up to urinate. I remember walking to the toilet thinking "hmmm..My face feels numb" then standing and peeing thinking "I'm a bit dizzy" then, an unknown amount of time later I heard a choir of people screaming..like thousands of people singing a different song and trying to sing louder than everyone else so their song would be sung by others and not just themselves. It sounded nightmarish.

I woke up in a puddle of my own blood (not urine though, so I had finished peeing at least). I had fainted and bashed my head on one of the many things to bash your head on in the bathroom. Ambulance ride and ER visit followed staples in my head and I was back home.

But I realized I had experienced total non-existence for a period of time and that was what death must be like except for the waking up part, but because I woke up I saw everything a bit clearer.

You know how when someone reaches enlightenment in Buddhism and say shit like "we are all one, everything is connected" and people give them money for being saffron clad dildos? Those dildos are right. We are connected to everything. We are all one. But what connects us and what we are "one" with is not at all pleasant. Something in our biology, of life intelligent enough to grasp their own insignificance makes us deny this or we try to anthropomorphize the void into something else, something more ape-like so we can grasp it and change it into something reassuring rather than terrifying but you get brained one night in the bathroom and perhaps lose that natural ape defense mechanism.

I have not yet started to try a program of self delusion so instead I have been seeking discomfort in the writings of Thomas Ligotti.

Conspiracy Against the Living is quite good.

---edit---

I mean Conspiracy Against The Human Race. But really, titles are hard to remember since I often only read them once.

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